1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sheet-sorting apparatus for sorting sheets discharged from a copy machine, printer or an image-processing device.
2. Description of the Related Arts
The following describes a sheet-sorting apparatus that is used to sort a series of sheets formed with indicia thereupon into pluralities of sets.
Sheet-sorting apparatuses have a stacking tray for the final stacking of sheets having indicia formed thereupon and a processing tray established along the path of a process to transport sheets to the stacking tray. Also, sheets that have indicia formed thereupon are stacked on an interim-processing tray from which they can be switched backed and discharged to the stacking tray.
In the transporting process of the sheets just described, all sheets are transported to the interim-processing tray whereat the relative positions of the sets of sheets are shifted. In other words, the interim-processing tray shifts the leading sheet set to either the right side or to the left side for sorting.
In the type of apparatus as described above, all of the sheet sets have to be shifted in order to be sorted, so any subsequent sheet sets cannot be transported to the processing tray without discharging the sheet set that is on the processing tray to the interim-processing tray. Therefore, while discharging the sheet set on the interim-processing tray to the stacking tray, a waiting time had to be created for stopping the transporting of subsequent sheets. Because such waiting time is required, the continuation of the process is interrupted and much processing time is required.
Also, if a series of sheets to be sorted exceeds the limit that can be stacked on the processing tray, the sheet set could not be carried onto the processing tray at one time.
The objective of this invention is to attain a sheet processing apparatus that is capable of continuous processing without requiring waiting time, as has been necessary in the past, and to provide an image-processing apparatus equipped with such an apparatus.